CURRENT COMEDY

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Back in the happier days when … Aye!) Fonzi was cool &
B) fore it was “goodbye blue skies, hello gray,” the sitcom series “Happy Days”
seemed seamlessly inventive and we could depend on the Cunninghams & clan to
resolve each and every problem within 22 minutes thus keeping the world always
seeming right, right? Simple and understandable. That is until that one episode
when the whole gang went to Hawaii and Fonz jumped his surfboard over a shark.
Then we all realized they weren’t simply simple, they were simply stupid. Nowadays
you can’t even find that tripe in syndication on cable. It’s dead. The whole Happy
horse crap had eaten itself. Like the way the GOP elephant keeps in-breeding
itself into a mammoth extinction.

This season as we watch
the collective “conservative” character careen past contemptible and straight-aways
into farcical and we once again endure these wingnuts boasting over the open
pyre they’ve made of their once grand old party, it’s beginning to look a lot like
it’s time to pop the cork on the whole thing and sing “Auld Lang Syne.” These
guys won’t even make believable cartoon villains anymore, not after this one.

Tis the season to make folly as they say. Or so it seems for
the GOP this yuletide. First off, there’s the whole McConnell filibustering
himself business, which adds a whole Keystone Cop-ish flair to their work these
days. Or the fact that it is supposed to be big news that SC Senator Jim De
Mint sent in his resignation so he can go run the Heritage Foundation to
collect more donations to advance conservative legislation. Or there’s that
part where 25% of GOP want their states to secede because Obama is crushing
business meanwhile we’re experiencing the largest increase in corporate profits
in history. But now, as outrageous as the veryday antics are,the GOP has not
only now officially jumped the shark, but they twirled their mustache and tossed Tiny
Tim’s crutch in the Barbie. & just in time for Christmas!

Now over the years, I have watched the GOP make some major
bonehead moves, like that whole Bush thing, spending the surplus on tax cuts,
and putting a billion dollars behind the idea that the majority of the American
thinking-public would consider Romney remotely human. You guys crack me up.

But this whole Rick Santorum/Glenn Beck driven Agenda 21 fiasco
the Right have been churning for the past several months has finally lead to the
Republicans voting down spreading the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) globally
because so many GOP hate the UN that we are supposed to be afraid this treaty
is secret proof the UN wants to kill our children. That’s right, the treaty
that establishes universal accommodations for the disabled and is modeled off
of our own 1990 ADA is actually such a Republican freak-out that icky old Ricky
Santorum came out of mothballs to come on stage and call for the GOP to torpedo
the treaty by saying signing the treaty to enforce the ADA throughout the rest
of the world would give the UN the power to euthanize US disabled kids. So keep
it straight, if we are loyal Americans we need to be OK with not caring about
the lame and the weak, because if we do the bad guys will kill our children. Thom
Hartmann points out that following the successful Santorum drive for rejecting
the treaty, Tricky Ricky sent out his latest fundraising letter.

You know the most amazing irony of this whole thing is that
the actual acronym for the treaty is CRPD, which equals “crippled,” right?
These guys are picking the CRPD and imagine themselves heroes. Of course, along
with their track record on the sick, the young the poor and the elderly, I
guess that makes sense.

Like with the mass shooting in Connecticut, even as parents
around the country are still fearful of sending their kids back to school and
kids around the county are even more tearful about going, TX GOP loudmouth Louis
Gohmert is already on the airwaves screaming that the injustice in this was
that the principal hadn’t had an M-4 automatic weapon on hand and FOX is shrieking
that Obama’s a dictator for mentioning in his eulogy that we could do a better
job of protecting our kids from gun violence. Of course to give credit where
its due, if Republicans had had their way these past few years, the GOP dream
of the good old days is so union-free that those kids would never have been in
danger in those classrooms. Heck, by age 7 they all would have been shackled to
machinery in sweatshops instead.

But you know what? America knows their happier days weren’t
yours and they certainly weren’t mine. This isn’t leadership, those guys aren’t
heroes, they aren’t statesmen, and they’re nothing more than bad actors. When
they’ve gotten to the point of suffering the little children because their
deaths interfere with the GOP’s pre-scheduled flag-waving, it begins to look a lot like Republicans have taken leave of the census and all they are left with is
cunning hams & the Klan.

The Mohave County Democratic Party held elections at their
reorganizational meeting in Lake Havasu City on December 5th. The
group elected Kingman resident and county District One party chair Joe Longoria
to a two year term as chairman of the county party. A recently returned Kingman native, Longoria
was elected last month to the District One position and had served as the
county point man for the Arizona Democratic Party’s Coordinated Campaign. “I didn’t think that I would end up in this
position, but we learned so much. Dems are going to go to the state house not
facing a super-majority and our Congressional delegation is majority blue. We
set up a lot of ground work, to move forward we will build from that.” Joe will replace Ed Pyrzynski, also of
Kingman.

Stepping down, due to family illness, after serving as an
interim chair for much of the turbulent 2012 election season, Ed Pyrzynski, a
former postman from Chicago was happy with the election. “The year started out
rough, but things worked out. The Dem booth at the County Fair was
impressive. All of us made a
difference.”

Rounding out the executive board, two-time state senatorial
candidate, Beth Weisser was re-elected to her position as first vice chair and
Peach Springs’ community leader Wanda Quesula was re-elected to be second
vice-chair. After over a decade in the county leadership, Lake Havasu’s Kay
Lilland announced her retirement as party treasurer and promised to stay in an
active position to help train her replacement, Kingman’s Danny Baker. Acting
county party secretary Mikel Weisser was elected to continue serving in that
position. And, Bullhead City’s David Hamilton was re-elected Sergeant at
Arms.

The Democrats will be facing a major rebuilding year with not
only the replacement of much of the party officers, but also the departure of
the heads of all three county districts as well. In Lake Havasu’s District
Three, in addition to the retirement of long-time county treasurer and Havasu
organizer, Kay Lilland, district chair Dave Tunnell, another Havasu mainstay,
is also stepping down citing illness in the family. Tunnell will be replaced by
Joan McDermott. Both Tunnell and Lilland have a driving force in the Lake
Havasu Democratic Party for years and both intend to remain active. Besides
training the new county treasurer, Lilland will continue to be the leader of
LHC’s Democratic Association of Havasu and Tunnell will take a role on the
newly revamped finance committee.

In District Two serving the Bullhead area, acting chair
Julie Piquette will continue officially in the role. Piquette replaced former
chair Hillary Williams when she resigned to run for the newly created Mohave
County District Five Supervisor position. In Kingman’s District One, long-time
chair and county party office manager Mary McLaughlin is stepping down after
eight years. Her son Patrick Gonzales also previously served as county chair.

In addition to electing Mohave County Party officers the
group also approved the slate of delegates who will represent the county party
at the state party’s quarterly meetings. Following a successful season of voter
registration and increased precinct volunteers the county delegation is
increasing from 14 to 20. From District One, the Kingman area, the delegates
are: Ed Pyrzynski, John Holland, Mert
Glancy, Joan Johns, Wanda Quesula, Beth Weisser, Mikel Weisser, Patrick
Gonzales, Mary McLaughlin, Susie Gestine, and Perry Wickerd of Dolan Springs.
From District Two, the Bullhead City area, Marty & Patricia Coburn, Julie
Piquette, Dave Hamilton, and Laureen Hayden. And from District Three, Lake
Havasu, Joan McDermott, Kay Lilland & Dave Tunnel. The party also announced
its list of newly appointed PCs, or precinct committee leaders: Paul Dean
Young, Merrit Becket, Jacky Goode from LHC; and
Carol & Pete Voydanoff, Hilary Williams, Richard Krup, Iretha
Badnar, Barb Grier from the Bullhead City area.

In addition to the election of officers, the party’s monthly
meeting also served as the official kick-off for this year’s annual fundraiser,
the Presidential Inaugural Ball. Event chair Dave Tunnell, working with is the
lead on the committee, reported the essentials of the Inaugural Ball: It will
be held Jan. 19th, $35, black tie optional. Dinner/Dance guest
former Board of Regents Chair and recent leader of AZ’s delegation to the
Democratic National Convention, Fred Duval. Tunnell’s survey of LHC Dems suggests that there may be a true
interest in such a celebration.” We are also hoping to be able to read a blurb
from the Whitehouse thanking Mohave County Dems. The tickets are distributed to
district chairs.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Another exciting month I tell you. Since the election we have
been pressing for every idea we could develop, which continued to advance the
issues we tried to promote in the congressional campaign: social justice,
economic fairness, celebratory diversity, Democrat cheerleading, GOP jeer-leading,
bad rhymes, loud music, art & fun. Larger
than politics, I joined into this effort of the Democrats and launched my own
personal campaign within it, to help our world get better, not just try to get
votes. With your help and support we have accomplished some things I wanted to
share. Right now, tonight as I type, I think we are doing just that,
accomplishing some things, changing the world.

So first, to acknowledge the realities of politics in the
Mohave County, as yet another election goes by and Dems only gather around
30-40% of the vote in this county, it became apparent to me that it was not only me who could not win in the new
AZ CD4 without Mohave County, no Democrat in the region could until we
revitalize the party and change the overall culture. So, rather than wait for
someone else to start working on it, since the election I have thrown myself
into our local District One Party and Mohave County Central Committee. Towards
that end I stepped up to fill a vacancy and, first, served as acting county/district
one secretary and now, as of Dec. 5th , I have been elected by
acclaim to both those positions. I also am thrilled to say my best friend and
great inspiration Beth Weisser has been re-elected to her position as county
party first vice-chair.

Next, while many Dems can trot out carloads of reasons we
need to sound moderate and be gentle with the GOP around us, I feel those guys
have been willfully impoverishing the country and wreaked untold suffering
among the public and, more so, will only stop when confronted and if possible,
as often as possible, be belittled in as comic a way as possible so the public
will begin to see their policies for the jokes they are and stop falling for
the all snake oil. So, with 2012 congressional campaign officially over I have
re-activated my political humor column, Current
Comedy (now in its 22nd year) Already there are two new columns
available online at my own blog sites of course, The Left Coast of AZ (the renamed blog page from the original
campaign blog) & the Current Comedy
site (which recently celebrated its 5th year online). But even more,
Current Comedy is also being featured on such national sites as Op-Ed News and Daily Kos and has returned at last to my hometown Kingman Daily Miner. Please visit KDM
and post a comment.

On the issues of social justice, ethical economics and
public health and safety, I have joined in the push for cannabis reform and pooled
my efforts with a long-time Dolan Springs activist (who also happens to be my
campaign assistant) Perry Wickerd, and LEAP (Law Enforcement Against
Prohibition) regional spokesperson, Jay Fleming, to promote MMJ (medical
marijuana) awareness and reform. Our nation is coming to a new age and the legalization
and regulation of social cannabis is the only way to win the drug war. Arizona’s
fledgling MMJ laws, while a great move forward, are still draconian at best and
filled with unnecessary obstacles for patients and unreasonable impediments for
the commerce of this already robust and expanding industry. So far, since Jan
Brewer finally allowed Prop 203 to take effect of sorts this past January, over
$5,000,000 have been generated in state revenue despite the best efforts of
Brewer and the GOP to cripple every aspect of the initiative. However, a
dispensary license has approved for Dolan Springs, so the public there need to
be informed of its impact on their society, their rights and responsibilities,
and have some of the persistent myths of the drug war debunked. With that in
mind, we have disorganized a Dolan Springs town hall meeting Thursday, Dec 13
5:30-7:00 at the Ranch Club in downtown Dolan Springs. Today news of that
upcoming meeting was front and center on the local Kingman Daily Miner website
and our efforts are just beginning. If you can attend this meeting, come and
share your voice. The restaurant at the Ranch Club loves this idea so much they
are holding a $5 pizza buffet for that night. While the meeting will be held to
feed your head, if you come with the munchies you can also feed your belly for
the cheap.

Lastly in our continuing efforts to promote art and
diversity of culture, we are thrilled to announce we are resuming our
collaboration for the 6th year with Kingman wunderkind, our resident
rocket scientist Bruce Carter and the Mohave County Library to organize and
host Kingman’s immensely popular book festival KABAM, (“Kingman-Area-Books-Are-Magic!”)
In addition, also thanks to Bruce and his dear wife Frances, our very own So-Hi Peacesign Themepark will be
hosting a visiting artist Mata Ortiz pottery exhibit and demonstration Dec. 22nd
late afternoon. Details on these two are TBA.

But hey, what an exciting month! Help us keep the activity
going. Spread the word, The Mikel Weisser Campaign is making a difference
today. Join us now and we will make an even bigger one tomorrow. Please
understand, I know I don’t know what I am doing, but I am doing my very best at
trying to figure it out as I get there. Thank you ALL for teaching me as I go.
This campaign is about us making the changes we want to see: universal health
care, a fully rounded, fully staffed, fully funded public education, an ethical
economy, a social justice system where all are fairly treated and a vibrant arts
community where expressions are championed and embraced. I think we can move
this world in that direction. Let’s try—

Monday, December 3, 2012

What do you call someone who cheers and sneers when our
country fails and works constantly against our successes? What about someone
who schemes to starve our fellow Americans, gleefully engineers their
impoverishment and homelessness, lie to their families and friends to get them
to ignore their crimes and then joyfully demeans millions of others for being
offended at their chicanery?

Well, personally, back in my construction worker days I would
have leaned towards the 14 letter phrase that translates loosely into proper English
as copulating rectum, though probably, a more accurate single 7 letter word
would be traitor. However, for the sake of this article, I will simply use the
common 10 letter term for such people: Republican.

Of course, dear reader, do understand I realize that may
appear an unduly harsh thing to say. Understand as well, I am painfully aware considering
the hostile demeanor of many GOP rank & file that that kind of language is
risky since I live in a community that is 70% GOP. And not your Orange County,
Polo shirt wearing, white-whine Republicans; but the hardcore “hoist the rebel
flag on the back of your pick-up, hate gays, dismiss minorities, pass no loitering
laws, try to avoid paying your share of taxes for a functioning government at
all costs, Obama’s a Kenyan & W was your hero”-type Republicans.

While we liberals in Mohave County may suffer from an excess
of such Republicanism, we by no means have a lock on the market. In the
weeks following the election, predictably but pathetically, disgruntled GOP
bought armaments of all sorts and in 40 different states went to the Whitehouse
website itself to toss down the gauntlet and post their petitions to secede.
That’s right, if Obama was going to be president, they would rather leave the
nation. Or rather in some blind fantasy would rather their state’s non-existent
but imagined untold wealth to give the evil Obama the weakening he deserves.

The irony here is that these folks, especially here in the
red states where such attitudes prevail; seem to think secession would be to
their advantage. But then since those red states contribute a minimal amount of
tax revenue and require a maximum amount of government services, since they
face the greatest amount social problems such as alcoholism, teen pregnancy, obesity,
and in-breeders named Bubba, the rest of
the country will be better off without you.

It is also worth keeping in mind that given how intertwined
state and federal resources and finances are, even with such stellar Tea Party
governors like Texas’ Rick Perry and our own Jan Brewer, no actual red state
governments have endorsed the idea of secession, only those states’ more
desperate, pathetic racists.

Well, if at first you don’t secede, don’t let the door knob
hit you in the behind on your way out the door. Still, playing the pouty little
four year old isn’t going to fix the problems our country is facing. The
majority of the economic woes Romney whined about were created by you guys. All
that bleeding heart BS about your worries about the deficit? Well why did you
make it in the first place? Obama came in with 11 trillion of debt from you
guys and Bush. You knew you were borrowing 40% on the dollar instead of
collecting taxes for a decade for phony wars, pork barrels by the bucket-load, and
foolish tax cuts for the plutocrats, but that crap was OK because a Republican was
doing it. But talk about money to fund schools, provide health care for the
elderly, or rebuilding our roads and rails before yet another trainload of
toxic chemicals derails into yet another river, and now it’s “no that stuff is
too expensive, don’t understand money doesn’t grow on trees?” Please.

See? That’s why I oppose the conservative values agenda, and
it’s not so much the R or the D behind the name, as the ideology in general. The
GOP like to act all morally superior, until no one is watching. You want to
talk about being responsible, talk about this: The government borrows 40% of
all it spends because the GOP resist taxes, which means that we owe the money
later anyway. You can’t run government without money, and you can’t run a
society this complex or an economy this fragile without one; so who are they
helping with this anti-tax BS? The public who at some point will still have to
pay for the debt through future taxes anyway or the GOP’s banker friends who
get the pay back either way guaranteed?

You can't cut away 40% of government spending without
ravaging the government (the parts we all depend on) and the economy that
depends on consumer spending to function no matter what the propagandists of
the “job creators” try to tell you. You guys still falling for that rouse about
government being nothing but waste and if we just cut this and just cut that,
then everything will be better? Politicians on both sides of the aisle have
been selling that canard and hacking away at social service funding for so long
in most government agencies where cutting even possible have already been slashed to the
point our government is already on life support after 30 years of a concerted
effort to drown it in the bathtub. Do the math.

I suck at math &
i can tell you it can't be done and shouldn't be done and there is no rational
reason to wish it except for personal greed or other avarice. The federal government
is a job creator no matter what lies GOP might spin, it creates 4 million jobs
directly and tens of millions otherwise through contracts and employee spending
on their lives. And that’s just a fraction
of the eighteen million local and state employees. More than twenty million
people, 11% of all the jobs are government job.

Real people, real
services provided and real money spent in their communities and our common economy,
and that isn't even talking about the folks who receive services through the
government and the impact their lives have on the economy. All that costs money
and GOP rail about taxes but they spend money at a faster rate than Dems.
(Obama's spending V Reagan/Bush I or II? It's no contest.) So what are you
going to do? Cut ALL federal jobs? That hardly dents the deficit, if that's
what you’re concerned about? About all those food stamp moochers and
unemployment deadbeats? Well that public aid goes DIRECTLY to living expenses
for the poor and straight back into the economy in the form of their personal
spending. They aren't Romney shipping the money to off shore accounts you know?
Or did you think that far? Cut off all aid to the supposed 47% of losers who
supposedly leech off of faultless sinless noble you? Kill off the population?

For the past 40 years Republicans have driven this country
pretty much however they’ve wanted , which appears to have been straight into
the ground. We followed their policies into the S&L crisis, into
Iran-Contra, into Enron, into two should destroying wars and into gutting our
public to give trillions to the banksters designed our disaster in the first
place. And then wag your supposed holier than thou ness in our faces as if that
trumped all other points? What makes you
think you appear trustworthy in any fashion in the first place. You guys are
just the bullies that have been running the show. But that doesn’t mean I have
to like it, or that America as a whole isn’t getting sick of it.

Here is a little story illustrating what I am talking about.
According to Romney, Ryan and the rest of the Republican talking heads, the purposes of government isn’t to ensure
domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, or provide defense for the
public against predators foreign or domestic. No, for the GOP the purpose is
accelerate the process of serving up the poor for the rich to eat them and demonizing
and restricting all minorities who won’t vote conservative. Which, I guess, is
all well and good if you are a member of the club. Except like Fight Club, they aren’t supposed
to admit these aims to the public. Flags, guns and Jesus are all the public should
see.

So when Romney grumbled out loud in a post-election taped
phone call about how the fabled 47% had let America down, he let the cat our of
the bag that Republicans basically hate the public and see them only as prey. So,
other GOP still hoping to bilk the public into thinking they might have souls, turned
on him like they do everyone else. No honor among thieves I guess.

Finding that kind of crap hilarious, I shared an article about
the sharks eating their own with the general Facebook public. Following the
leaking of his post-election donor phone call, according to some reporters,
Romney appeared to have become the most hated man in America. Next thing I know
an area Republican, Mohave County District two Supervisor, Hildy Angius felt obliged
to assert no matter how much I thought
I hated Romney, she hated Obama 16 trillion times more, because, as is typical
of GOP, she believes her opinions aren’t just more important than anyone else’s,
but trillions of times more important.

It's that senseless sense of hyperbole and mock outrage the
GOP typically employ that is part of the attitude i find offensive. If i
actually hated Romney, which i don't, there would be no way any other single
person could hate Obama 16 trillion times more. One person = one person. That’s
a false sense of entitlement and elitism. Romney wasn't ever hate-able in
himself. He was just a salesman, for other people's ideas. I battled the ideas.
Why waste energy hating in the first place much less hating a figurehead. Like
the song goes, "Republicans need a puppet and you fit/got their hands so
far up your rear they call you Mitt."

No wonder folks like Romney and Boehner can so casually
discuss destroying the education of a nation and call for the starvation and
impoverishment of millions of poor, disabled, elderly, veterans, and/or
unemployed. If those people aren’t GOP then they don’t matter. Even if they are
GOP, if I can’t make money with or off of them, they don’t matter. They might
as well not even exist. No matter what possible tragedy or agony they might be
going through, it isn’t even equal to a trillionth of a Republican’s minor
irritation. Typical Republican I guess. Maybe, if she’s lucky she’ll realize
the error of her ways & her math. If not, maybe we’ll be lucky and she’ll
want to secede like the rest of the Tea Party math deficients. So the people
who actually love America can try to repair some of the messes they’ve made.

Thursday, November 29, 2012

One of the issues i
addressed in my campaign was cannabis reform, both on the long range social
justice issue of legalization, but more immediately to address the inherent
problems, oversights, glitches, errors if you will, with our state's nascent
medical marijuana regulations. One of the first places in Mohave County to be
approved for a medical marijuana (MMJ) dispensary is in tiny Dolan Springs, a
wide spread but sparsely populated desert community about 30 miles north of
Kingman, the home-base of my tireless campaign assistant, Perry
Wickerd.

Due to decades of
stigmatization and restricted access of information, many Arizonans are
uninformed of their rights and the implications of having a MMJ dispensary in
their community. Current AZ MMJ laws restrict general public information and
advertising about dispensaries, so, in the public interest, in conjunction with
Jay Fleming from the Mohave County LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition),
Perry has organized a town hall meeting. Please feel encouraged to attend if
possible and share this information.

If my campaign was about
anything, it was about informing the public that we have the power to shape our
lives and our country if we will only begin taking action. I have pledged to
continue working on the issues as best i can. In this case that means helping
spread word of the great work LEAP & Perry Wickerd.

mikel

Informational Open Forum
for Residents of Mohave County

@ Castle Rock Ranch and
Arena in downtown DOLAN SPRINGS (formerly known as the “Ranch
Club”)

Castle Rock and LEAP are
hosting a Town Hall Meeting for residents of Mohave County to learn about the
laws and implications of the medical marijuana dispensary being approved for the
Dolan Springs district. This is the first and only dispensary to be approved in
Mohave County so far. Speaker Jay Fleming will present information followed by a
question and answer session for residents.

Admission is free and
the forum is open to all. In addition, a $5 pizza buffet will be available to
anyone interested in refreshments.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

This post was originally published on my campaign website & elesewhere 11/15/12:

***

As a recently defeated candidate for public office, few
people may consider my advice sound, but here goes anyway.

Hey Mohave County Republican Party: Congratulations on your
recent victory. I remember another victory you guys had back in 2004--an
embattled president facing a challenge from a controversial politician out of
Massachusetts, a divided nation. In the end, though, a decisive victory of more
than three million votes and a re-elected president who took that margin and
claimed it was a mandate. “I have earned some political capital and I aim to
spend it!” George Bush then launched into a program that totally ignored the
wishes of the half of the electorate to kowtow to his perpetually shrinking, but
none the less, rabid base. Welcome to 2012, that rabid base of yours has shrunk
nationally to below the 50% mark. Now, don’t you hope that Dems’ donkeys are
more gracious than your sorry donkeys have been?

Don’t get me wrong. The Mohave County Republican Party can
be indisputably proud of their accomplishments this round. We are clearly the
reddest county in the state. You guys thunderously won virtually every local and
state elective office and got Romney 70% of the vote. Only two states turned out
such numbers, Wild West Wyoming and, small wonder, Romney loving Utah. In fact
only ten states nationally went red by 60+%. Metro area counties like Maricopa
and Pinal weren’t even greater than 60%. Four counties entirely refused your Tea
Party and went over to the blue side. College counties Pima and Coconino both
backed Obama. He took two-thirds of the Apache County vote and, a whopping 68%
of Santa Cruz County.

So, Mohave County Republican Party, job well done. Now shut
up and learn to listen before your party demographically goes the way of the
Dixiecrats and other such red-meat eating dinosaurs. A three million vote
margin is a mandate. Your team just lost the presidency in more than half
the states, lost seats in Congress in general, lost your supermajority in PHX,
and lost more than half of the state’s Congressional seats. AND, it’s the fifth
time in the last six presidential elections that Dems earned more votes. If
ever a presidential election could have simply been bought, this surely should
have been it. If ever there was a president who has been demonized, vilified, it
has been Barack Obama. And it did no good.

Turns out the American public also does not actually
honestly desire a massive repudiation of Obamacare. We actually honestly do care
about caring about people. You know how the Right always say, “The law’s the
law”? Well, the law’s the law. The Affordable Care Act passed. It’s the law.
Shut up about it. Get used to the ACA and stop wasting state money on losing
litigation trying to battle a program that, while compromised, has more
strengths than weaknesses.

Know what else? There is no rich man’s tax cut worth giving
up my son’s education over, or my mother’s healthcare, just sayin’. No tax cut
ever built a highway, taught a child, or stopped a criminal, just sayin’. Also
Cannabis is going to legal someday. Women want birth control, not rapists’
babies, and same sex marriage won on the ballot. Face it: if you really have to
worry about the sex in someone’s else marriage, that means you are not having
enough of your own.

But seriously, while your numbers and sheer orneriness
might give you guys the west side of the state home-team advantage for now, the
politics of race and rights and money are slipping away from you. The angrier
old white men get about losing their will to stem the tide of time, the more
rapidly their dominance will slide. In California they even voted to raise their
own taxes. Less than 30% of the public are still willing to register Republican.
And you know what they say about Californians: they keep moving to
Arizona.

--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ and was
a 2012 primary candidate for US House of Representatives

Hello anybody who is still reading Current Comedy. Happy 5th anniversary! Happy Thanksgiving; I am thankful for you.

I so appreciate your attention and apologize for largely ignoring this blog for the past year while i ran for Congress in AZ's 1st election for the actual left coast of AZ, the newly created Congressional District 4, which includes almost all of the three river counties in AZ: Mohave, La Paz & Yuma (in addition to portions of Yavapai, Maricopa, Pinal & Gila Counties). It was a grand adventure and one i hope to repeat, but in the meantime, I am continuing my work of raising awareness of issues in westerrn AZ, promoting art and humor, and working with progressive groups and the AZ Democratic Party to advance the progressive agenda.

For me, the creation of CD4 has been an immense opportunity for Mohave County, and rural AZ in general, to be free from the stamp of PHX and the reign of Trent Franks. We can create our own imagery now and the rural AZ mentality isn't simply a matter of Bibles and bullets anymore. Tolerance and diversity are a redeeming strength in our country and a coming wave here in the "Mississippi of the West" as our state was affectionately known back in the day it took the entire federal gov't and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to stop our racist shenagans. Our future is tolerance and diversity. America is changing and whether they like it or not, Arizonans are leading the change. I am even in favor of tolerance of Bibles and bullets but not when one is used to force the other down my throat.

I should acknowledge the 2012 election cycle has changed my life and my vision profoundly and probably permanently. I see the wisdom of working to affect change throught he poltical process and am off and running. In an effort to resume having an impact while i await the actual 2014 election cycle i have resumed my opinion column and aim to re-establish the posting schedule i once followed that allowed the column to be published (well, posted anyway) regularly on numerous sites and thus affect opinion and thus change throughout America.

To any long-time readers still out there, I ask you to consider the time pressures of campaigning and forgive my ignoring this site. At the end of 2010, during the period i consider some of the best articles in this long running series, i was spending 8-12 per week on each single column. I know it didn't seem that way considering the typos i'd strewn about; but the point is there was no way to continue writing those kinds of articles and campaign for Congress ... or pretty much do anything other than teach, feed the chickens, occasionally kiss the wife and campaign, campaign, campaign.

Further, as soon as i announced in Jan. some of the papers stopped running my online column to not give me undue advantage. Not having those audiences made the prospect of investing the labor even less appealing. So, i further hope any of my regular readers had continued to follow our efforts change at the campaign website: www.mikelweisser.org
or at the campaign blog: http://www.mikelweisser.blogspot.com/

I have now adapted the campaign site to be a non-profit activist site and will continue to post updates and hopefully get to the point of being a nexus for Mohave/CD 4 activists. We are continuing to move forward and i have already begun creating public activism and events to advance the progressive cause, the same way this column once attempted to. So towards that end, and in celebration of the both Thanksgiving (my 2nd favorite holiday) and this 5th anniversary, I encourage everybody to re-read my first article:http://yzurblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/current-comedy-112307-if-dems-really.html

Also, i ask you to be thankful. Be thankful the Romney vision did not capture America. Be thankful enough of America is wise enough to not follow lockstep in line with the dominant propaganda. Be thankful the people appear to have spoken and said they want more progress and less plutocrats. Be thankful you all know each other are out there working for the better. And be thankful America still has another chance.

So now we must take it--
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ

About Me

Born the son of a nightclub singer, Mikel Weisser watched anti-war hippies getting beaten on TV during the Vietnam War and decides to devote his life to protest against unreasoning authority, but not to getting beaten. After spending almost two years traveling the country as a hitchhiker Weisser received a Masters in Literature and a Masters in Secondary Education, published hundreds of freelance magazine and newspaper articles and political commentary columns along with 8 books of poetry and short fiction. After spending four years managing a homeless shelter while and appearing as a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Weisser began teaching, and moving to Arizona on New Year’s Eve 2000. Weisser lives and his wife Beth were married at their home in So-Hi, Arizona and live with their daughter Victoria, numerous pets and ever expanding collection of artwork and books.